


fear

by mnemememory



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Gen, spoilers for episode 49, spoilers for nott's backstory
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-29
Updated: 2019-01-29
Packaged: 2019-10-18 14:01:16
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,003
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17582243
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mnemememory/pseuds/mnemememory
Summary: Veth is not brave





	fear

Veth is not brave.

Running isn’t heroism. Running is habit, the burn of her lungs a distant echo to the terror that sears through her chest. She’s ahead, but barely. Veth doesn’t dare turn around because she’ll see them, then, within grabbing distance. When she turns around, she is dead.

Her legs aren’t working properly. Nothing about her body has ever worked properly except for her legs, and now they’re failing, too. She’s run past the point of exhaustion, past the point of pain. She’d have vomited up the contents of her stomach long ago if she’d eaten anything this week. She hadn’t. Everything she and Yeza had smuggled through the bars, they had given to Luke.

And he’d still been fading…

Veth isn’t good for anything. She’s known that her whole life. Veth is not smart, or beautiful, or talented. But she can run. Her whole life, she’s been running.

“Be safe,” Yeza whispered, pressing something small and glass into her hands. His eyes were sunken, hands barely skin over bone. Veth wanted to reach out and kiss him and pretend that it was years ago, that there were no goblins around them, that this was just a dare between strangers.

Yeza is lying. It’s not for Veth – it’s for Luke. “Be safe,” he says, and what he really means is “goodbye.”

The goblins are catching up.

She can hear them, the heavy breathing wheezing through sharpened teeth. Veth has bite-marks riddled along her arms from when they had been captured, the puncture marks swollen and oozing. They’re dragging her down. She’s been filled with lead. Every step further is so – much – effort –

(Every step further is a step further away from her family).

(Veth keeps running).

“Come back here you _bitch_ ,” one goblin snarls. She doesn’t recognise his voice, but that isn’t surprising – all goblins sound alike. “I’m going to gut you and hang you out alive on _toothpicks_ , I’m going to carve off your face and –”

Veth stumbles.

The ground isn’t even. It’s rocky, and unsteady, and rolling underneath Veth’s feet. Veth stumbles, and her legs give out.

She’s up in an instant, rolling with the blow to avoid falling completely prone. The momentary lapse is all it takes for them to surround her. She looks up and she’s got goblins at all sides, all teeth and grinning. The glass vial sits in the centre of her fist, hot.

“Well well well,” one says, stepping forward. The rest of the goblins shuffle around to close the gap. A few of them are laughing. Veth straightens her spine and clenches down hard with her hand. “What do we have here?”

_How do I want to die_? she thinks. There are options. For the first time in her life, Veth has options.

“You’re such a _small_ thing, to have given us so much trouble,” the goblin says. He’s a little taller than the rest, a little broader around the neck. He’s got strings of teeth wrapped around his throat and wrists, battered leather hide covering his body in strips. His grin skin reflects sickeningly in the sunlight.

Veth bares her teeth. Her family is gone. There is no one here but her and the goblins.

_How do I want to die_?

“Better small than stupid,” she says, unstopping the vial with the flat of her thumb and throwing it across his face.

He screams.

Immediately, the rest of the goblins surge forward. Three grab her wrists while the rest lunge for their fallen comrade. A few try to mop up the acid with their clothing, only to howl as it begins to eat at their own flesh. Veth grins into the dirt, hysteria bubbling thick and hot against her collarbone.

She closes her eyes and thinks of Yeza, and of Luke. They’re safe. They’re safe, and that’s all that matters. Veth doesn’t care what happens to a good for nothing like her. All she needs to know is that her family is safe.

The goblin has not stopped screaming. The smell of burnt, melting flesh rings acrid across the hillside.

“…back to camp,” one of them is saying. “We need to get back to…”

Veth gasps as one of the goblins punches her hard in the back of the head. Her eyes fly open for a split second before darkness begins to bleed across her vision, and the last thing she sees is the disfigured face of the goblin, skin burnt away from his skull, teeth exposed shiny and yellow along his jawbone.

Then nothing.

…

…

Veth wakes up.

Veth wakes up, and there is a clawed hand gripping the tattered remains of her shirt collar. A goblin woman is glaring down at her, breathing heavily. The stench of rotting meat fills Veth’s nostrils, and she struggles not to gag. The goblin woman has tear-tracks running down along the sides of her yellow eyes and blood dribbling from the corner of her mouth. Her teeth stand out from her mouth in wide, fanged fury.

“You killed my husband,” she hisses.

_I killed a goblin_ , Veth thinks. _Me_.

“You are a proud thing,” the goblin woman says. “You are a wretched, proud _worm_ who has no idea of the damage you have wrought.”

_He will never touch my family again_ , Veth thinks. She’s scared, but it’s a dull kind of terror. Veth is so tired.

“For this transgression, there will be no forgiveness,” the goblin woman says. “Burning is too good for you. Bleeding is too good for you.”

There is a small sound to her side, and the goblin woman turns. Standing along the seam of the tent is another goblin, wrapped in pieces of bone and leather. The goblin woman lets go of Veth and reaches out to the stranger with both arms wide open. Veth collapses back, wrists bending awkwardly.

“Make her suffer,” the goblin woman says, and the stranger smiles.

…

…

(How do I want to die?)

…

…

Veth is not brave.

When they pull her out from the water, she screams.

...

...

**Author's Note:**

> sorry guys for the delay this last week has been A Lot and also fuck you sam riegel for making me cry


End file.
